


Steady As the Stars In the Woods

by failwolfhale



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Kinda, M/M, Narrative, Not Canon Compliant, it's mostly Derek, mostly derek feels, very light sterek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-27
Updated: 2013-02-27
Packaged: 2017-12-03 18:33:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/701344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/failwolfhale/pseuds/failwolfhale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Isaac had thought to bring his guitar so they’d sit around the fire at night and sing, Derek grudgingly joining them for the songs that he actually knew. Derek thought a lot about his lost family, his mother and father, Laura and Sarah and Hannah and Uncle Peter and his cousins and aunts and uncles, and realized that the people surrounding him now had become a new kind of family. They were his friends, his pack and they were all he’d always have. The thought warmed his heart and filled his chest with a soft glowing light that seemed to shine in his eyes if the way Stiles looked at him was any indication. They were his rocks, his anchors, the people he couldn’t imagine his life without anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Steady As the Stars In the Woods

**Author's Note:**

> Title and inspiration coming from Ben Howard's song Old Pine which you can listen to **[HERE](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8ccDb6n5Wg)** and I highly recommend.  
>  Ben Howard is King forever and always.

The story goes like this…

There was once a family that lived atop a hill surrounded by trees in a large wooden house. The only way to get to the house was through bumpy, hard to travel roads. Now, not just any car could traverse these roads, they were bumpy and covered in large rocks to make it impossible for anyone to sneak up on the house.

The family grew so large over time that the members eventually had to spread out along the coast. Legend says that every month on the full moon the family would shift into huge beasts, wolves that prowled the hillside and killed whatever they came across, human or otherwise. No one could prove this, though, and as the years past the stories stopped being told and the family was able to live in peace.

The great granddaughter, Talia, of the original family members moved into the large house on the hill with her husband, and they had four beautiful children, three girls to be called Laura, Sarah and Hannah, and one boy to be called Derek. Sarah remained human while the others turned to huge wolves every full moon. But unlike the old legends, they were tamed wolves. They roamed the woods and chased deer and gathered in a large clearing to howl at the moon together, but never did they harm a human.

At Christmastime the family would gather together once more at the original house on the hill and then travel to the south where beaches were warm, the sun hot and the sand scorching. The pups would sleep in their sleeping bags on the sand around a fire while the adults would take the tents, waking to fog surrounding them and the fire turned to glowing embers in the pit. On the third day of their trip they would travel into the nearby woods in the dawning light and search for the perfect pine tree for their wooden house on the hill. As the head male of the pack cut the pine down the wolves would shift and sing out a song to bless the morning, howling a beautiful symphony. They would take the pine back to the house on the hill and everyone would help with the decorating, ending in a pile on the floor in front of the fire with _It’s A Wonderful Life_ playing on the TV and hot cups of cider gripped in hands.

When Derek grew to fifteen he met a beautiful woman called Kate who used bright eyes and wide smiles and soft words to work her way into his heart. She was seven years older than him and made him swear to keep the secret as she stole his innocence and drew out his secrets. Secrets like the paved road behind the house that made it easier to approach without alerting any of the wolves as long as one didn’t get too close.

Christmas rolled around that year and Talia Hale sent her son and daughter, Laura and Derek, out to the grocery store while the others arrived. While the siblings were gone, the woman who pledged her love to Derek snuck up and spread mountain ash so the wolves could not escape and set the house on fire, waiting as their bodies were engulfed in flames. She lingered there, listening to their screams like it was music and inhaling the scent of burning flesh like it was the most savory wine.

Derek and Laura returned to no family except for their uncle Peter who was just a shell of the man he had been before.

Months later Peter was still on life support and Laura had to make the decision to pull the plug, knowing that it was no sort of life for him anymore. They left right after the funeral and didn’t return until years later when Laura was twenty seven and Derek was twenty one.

Laura had always struggled with the Alpha since it had been thrust onto her too quickly but she only really lost control when someone made her too angry. Which a dark haired boy seemed to be good at with his stubbornness. Derek could smell the fear and fury in his friend’s aura after Laura had sunk her teeth into DarkHair's side and despite Derek’s thoughts that he would run, ProtectiveFriend shoved Laura’s head away and bared his teeth before falling to the ground next to the floppy haired boy.

Laura had immediately snapped out of it when she realized what she’d done, eyes wide and lower lip trembling when she regained control. Derek held her back when she tried to get close to the boy she’d bitten and the other one crouched in front of him protectively. Idly he wondered if maybe Laura should have bitten ProtectiveFriend as he seemed to already have some sense of a wolf’s instinct.

The bitten one they learned was called Scott and the protective friend was called Stiles. ( _Seriously what kind of a name is Stiles?_ Derek thought.)

Stiles was protective, staying at Scott’s house and making sure neither Derek nor Laura could push through the door; turned out to be good at research when Laura tried to push past him and he pressed wolfsbane into her eyes. Derek had growled and hid the impressed nod he wanted to give out, helping Laura back to the Camaro and hightailing it out of there.

Stiles finally let Laura and Derek within ten feet of Scott after his first full moon, both wolves surprised not to have heard of any mysterious animal attacks the previous night. For a bitten wolf it would take a lot of training and talking through to be able to control the pull of the moon, usually with a few slip ups. But somehow Stiles had been able to condition Scott enough that he only needed to be tied up in his bedroom with Stiles sitting and talking and throwing Cheetos into his best friend’s mouth. Stiles was good at that, good at talking and keeping Scott’s heart rate down.

Derek was thoroughly impressed and didn’t even bother to hide it; neither, it seemed, did Laura.

Slowly, Scott allowed Derek and Laura into his life and with Scott came Stiles. Laura apologized profusely to Scott for biting him and Stiles stood nearby with eyes as hard as amber but said nothing as Scott reassured her that it was okay, he was glad to have his asthma gone and to have made first string in lacrosse.

Derek, at first, thought that Stiles’ attitude was due to jealousy but then one night he heard Laura offer him the Bite.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Stiles had hissed, eyes burning like embers in a fire.

Laura’s blue eyes widened and she leaned back irrationally like the human could possibly do anything to her. “I thought you were just...jealous. If you take the Bite you could make first string too and your ADHD would go away,” she explained, suddenly uncertain.

“And do that to my dad? Put _him_ in danger? Keep secrets from him like you’re forcing Scott to keep from his mom? Secrets like that I'm not fucking human anymore? I don’t fucking think so,” Stiles spat, jaw clenched and shoulders tensed like he was preparing for a fight, as if Laura would bite him against his will. “My dad already knows something's up and I know that just because I’m human you automatically think I’m _less_ than you are, but I’m not. I don’t need super speed and super healing to be able to defend the people I love.”

Laura had flinched a bit at that and Derek wanted to step up and defend her. But he was somewhat in awe of the human, curious as to _why_ he wouldn’t want so much power, _why_ he would choose to stay mediocre in comparison with his best friend.

Things were smoother after that. A witch came through with ill intent but the wolves and Stiles managed to run her off with well placed iron traps and faerie blood, which Deaton had explained would repel witches and also would burn their skin if they came into contact with it.

But other than a few minor mishaps, nothing was too bad until the Alpha pack came to town and left Laura’s body on the front steps of the burned out Hale House.

The three boys all cried, even Stiles, and he and Scott helped to bury Laura with dignity. Scott helped Deaton clean up her body; Derek dug the grave out by the grove where he and Laura used to play as children; and Stiles wove the rope of wolfsbane so the wolves wouldn’t have to touch it. They buried Laura on a gorgeous spring day when the skies were bright blue with no clouds, a cool breeze ghosting over their skin and warm sun trying to win out over the wind. They buried her under a spiral as a promise and the wolfsbane in respect, bowed their heads and bit out a few teary words.

Derek withdrew more into himself then and Stiles understood. Scott didn’t know, hadn’t moved to Beacon Hills until a year after the fire, but Stiles had been there, had been eleven years old and had hidden under his father’s desk when Laura and Derek came in to give their statements about the fire. Kate Argent had been hauled in and locked up in an insane asylum where she hanged herself two days after transfer.

After that, Stiles tried his best to make the three of them a pack, he acted as the buffer when Derek yelled about Scott’s infatuation with Allison Argent, niece of the woman who’d killed Derek’s entire family; when Scott withheld information out of spite. But the three of them weren’t enough so he argued and used logic until Derek agreed to let Stiles help him choose prospective pack members.

They started with Isaac Lahey whose father beat him black and blue but the cops could never find enough incriminating evidence and Isaac was too afraid to testify. Stiles knew him from lacrosse, would watch with sympathy as he tried his best to play but could never been first line material because of his constant injuries. So they sat on the bench together and cheered for their team and didn’t say much else until Stiles approached him with the proposition.

He took Isaac to Derek who explained gruffly the deal they could make; Derek would give Isaac the Bite, giving him the ability to protect himself from his father, in return Isaac would stay a part of Derek’s pack to protect and comfort (Stiles’ words) each other. Isaac took a walk outside to get some air before coming back and agreeing, only wanting to wait until he could finally testify his dad. He knew he would need to show evidence of the abuse and if he had healing abilities all bodily evidence would be lost.

Derek agreed and Stiles drove Isaac to the Sheriff’s station where his father listened with wide eyes and had pictures taken, deputies going to Isaac’s house to arrest Mr. Lahey. The trial lasted two weeks, with Isaac’s testimony and evidence he pointed the cops to in a shed in the woods about two miles behind the house, they had enough to finally convict his father.

Derek bit Isaac three days after his father was sentenced to life in an out of town prison with a restraining order placed on him should he ever attempt parole. The four of them worked well together but there was still something missing.

Laura’s birthday rolled around and Derek got so upset he tore down the remains of the old Hale house and Stiles found him later huddled under a small cave-like cavity under some huge sheets of wood and tiling that was probably the roof at one point. He crawled into the crevice of space left and pulled Derek over so he could press his face into Stiles’ chest and cry while Stiles told him how he took an ax to the treehouse he'd built with his mom on what would've been her 40th birthday after she died.

The next day Derek called a truck to come haul away the wreckage and Stiles brought Derek several huge books on homebuilding and renovation which were put to good use the summer before Scott, Stiles, and Isaac’s senior year. The foundation was still surprisingly stable and the guy who came to look at it was surprised to find it was in perfect condition for being several decades old. They built the new house out of stone with fire resistant coating on the wood floors and beams. It had a different structure as the original house but it was just as big with more rooms for their pack that Stiles (and Derek, secretly) hoped would grow as large as it once had been many years back.

Derek grudgingly allowed Allison to help with the interior decorating and she offered tentative dimpled smiles and smelled like sunshine and daisies and green apples almost always mingled with what was unmistakably Scott. Slowly Derek thawed towards her, accepting that she was nothing like Kate had been and was trying so hard to show him that, to win his approval.

Her eyes brightened when the house was finished and Derek gave her an approving nod and even a small smile when he saw his own bedroom that she’d designed, exactly how he’d have wanted it but wouldn’t have known where to start with it.

So that brought their small pack up to five but when they almost didn’t make it out of a fight with a group of malevolent redcaps, Derek went to Stiles to help find others to turn. Stiles, in turn, came back with a shy quiet girl called Erica who suffered seizures that medication didn’t help and Vernon Boyd who was more of an outcast, a few weeks later, both of whom accepted the Bite. Lydia came along on her own (because _of course_ she knew what was going on) after her final breakup with Jackson Whittemore when he moved to France with his parents, but somehow the Bite didn’t turn or kill her and she remained human. Still, she was almost as smart as Stiles and a smooth talker who could bend words to her will and use them to talk her way into or out of any situation, so she stayed as part of the pack like Stiles and Allison were.

Each of the pack chose a room in the big house, successfully leaving one room for anyone else they might pick up if the time came. But finally, Derek thought, the pack felt…whole.

Derek signed Isaac’s legal guardianship papers when the curly haired beta approached him nervously like he was afraid Derek would say no. They had the documents notarized and filed and Isaac moved in with Derek three days later out of the foster home he’d been put in.

Derek went with Lydia to her senior prom; he helped Scott bring up his English grade enough to graduate; helped Allison design a new arrow to hurt but not kill a prospective Big Bad with a scary mix of several different herbs to weaken almost anything supernatural long enough to extract information; helped Boyd edit his book; and taught Erica to be more confident in herself.

Stiles, though, Derek didn’t know how to help him with anything. The boy had warmed up to Derek considerably since after Scott had gotten bitten by his sister and wouldn’t hesitate to flop onto the couch after a long day and press his face into Derek’s thigh or stomach or hip, wherever he happened to land. But he also never asked for help with anything, had gotten over Lydia after she told him she just wanted to be his friend but nothing more. Sometimes Derek thought that Stiles was the one helping him instead of the other way around. So when the human’s head would invariably end up in his lap, Derek would rub his fingers into the hair on the back of his neck that had been allowed to grow out and he’d let Stiles rant and rave about whatever was upsetting him that day.

The pack spent Thanksgiving break clearing out the bumpy, hard to travel road and smoothing out the four miles of packed dirt to make it easier on anyone who wanted to get to the house, so they wouldn’t have to go around to the back road which had become somewhat overgrown.

Soon, Christmas was approaching and Derek was remembering his old trips with his family before Kate had ruined everything.

Derek knew that this would be the last Christmas before they scattered off to whichever colleges would accept them and he wasn’t sure they’d get to take this trip as a pack again. He wanted to take them on the trip, to create new memories and continue the traditions his family had in place even before Derek was born.

But he knew they wouldn’t be able to go as far as southern California, so he settled for a spot just a hundred miles south of Beacon Hills. They travelled in two cars (Erica, Boyd, Stiles and Derek in the Camaro and Scott, Allison, Isaac and Lydia in Lydia’s Ford Escape) to the middle of a pine tree grove in Mendocino National Forest. They reveled in the unusual warmth that the area was experiencing and spent three days together, running as wolves while the humans laughed at their antics, swimming in the cold river and enjoying each other’s company.

Isaac had thought to bring his guitar so they’d sit around the fire at night and sing, Derek grudgingly joining them for the songs that he actually knew. Derek thought a lot about his lost family; his mother and father, Laura and Sarah and Hannah and Uncle Peter and his cousins and aunts and uncles; and realized that the people surrounding him now had become a new kind of family. They were his friends, his pack and they were all he’d always have. The thought warmed his heart and filled his chest with a soft glowing light that seemed to shine in his eyes if the way Stiles looked at him was any indication. They were his rocks, his anchors, the people he couldn’t imagine his life without anymore.

On the third day when Isaac asked if he could cut down the Christmas tree they’d chosen, Derek handed over the ax and stepped back to stand beside his pack, between Stiles on his right and Erica on his left. He could still smell the smoke from the fire in his nostrils, feel it curling in his lungs, but it didn’t suffocate him anymore, especially not when Stiles reached over to wrap his fingers around Derek’s, the corner of his lips twitching up when Derek looked at him and tightened his hand around Stiles’.

Isaac stepped back into the semicircle they’d fallen into as the huge pine tipped over and Stiles mumbled a drawn out “timberrrrr” under his breath that made the others grin and roll their eyes. Allison started humming and soon Lydia and Erica and Scott joined in with the words to _The Christmas Songt_. Stiles echoed in with a roll of his eyes and Boyd hummed the bass tones in the background while Derek stood with his pack, steady as the sun and stars over their heads, happy again after so long of feeling like nothing would ever work out for him.

_Epilogue_ :

A new legend was formed over the years of the new family that replaced the one lost in a deliberate fire. The new family was smaller and lived in a stone house on a hill; they were peaceful now and humans walked among them. But they were fierce and protective of their territory and no one who threatened their land ever lived to tell the tale.

There’s the legend of the strong Alpha with bright green eyes and a sharp jaw; the legend of his human mate who stands as his equal with ferocity in his human eyes and dark freckles that disappear under his signature plaid shirts, leading their pack together that had since grown with children and would continue to grow.

The legends told of the tall beta who could move almost undetected through the underbrush; the large beta who could snap a neck with the flick of his wrist; the curvy beta with a sweet smile that she used to charm her way into unsuspecting enemies’ hearts; the dark haired beta with an easy smile who lulled his enemies into false security. Then there were the legends of the other two humans; the archer with disarming dimples who never missed her mark and the sharp tongued redhead who could make you believe anything.

The Alpha still lives on the big stone house on the hill with his mate, the others living in their own houses built together in the territory. And every Christmas they gather together at the big stone house on the hill before they travel down south to the beach for five days and on the third day they cut down their Christmas pine tree while the humans sing and the wolves howl along with them. And when they go home they decorate the tree and pile on the floor in front of the fire with apple cider while they fall asleep watching _It’s a Wonderful Life._

The legend says that if you can find the right place during the beginning of winter, you can still hear the wolves’ howls and humans’ voices rising above the sound of the wild blessing the morning and each other.

**Author's Note:**

> Uhm, so I wrote this all today on very little sleep and while I was hospital sitting with my grandma and then read over it myself to fix mistakes. So if you spot any or something doesn't make sense please don't hesitate to let me know!  
> Also, constructive criticism is always welcome but maybe don't shoot flames cuz that ain't cool.  
> Reviews are forever loved.  
> You can find me on [Tumblr](im-mad-at-you-because-i-love-you.tumblr.com)!


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